The First Snow of the Season

It snowed for the first time today.

My leaf raking buddy ❤

The day started off in the low 60s/high 50s (aka PERFECT fall weather). Hulk rode his bike to school while Little Viking Girl chased him on her scooter and I followed allowing with Link and Baby #3. We make quite the spectacle - twice a day, our group headed to Hulk's school and then back home. I've had neighbors come out of their houses to comment on my parenting (they're impressed because I'm super awesome 😘).

After coming home, Little Viking Girl and I finished raking the leaves in the front yard. It was warm enough that we didn't wear coats but she still cried the whole time because I wouldn't push her in the swing for more than ten minutes at a time.

When it was time to leave to pick up Hulk it had started raining. So I drove the half mile to his school, tucked his bike into the trunk of my car, grabbed Hulk and drove home. The weather had a dropped a bit at this point but it wasn't uncomfortably cold.

By the time J left work to drive home it had started to snow. It wasn't heavy and it wasn't sticking. Hulk refused to believe that it was actually snowing because the ground wasn't white. When it was time to put the kids in bed it had stopped snowing but the ground had finally turned white with a thing layer of snow.

I am not looking forward to taking Link for a run later.

I am going to freeze.

This last weekend I decided we should put our Christmas decorations up. Growing up, it was a tradition in my family to do it the day after Thanksgiving but I didn't feel the need to stick with that tradition this year. What's the point of having all of these Christmas decorations if you're only going to appreciate them for less than four weeks?

Side note: when J and I first married we had like three Christmas decorations. A nativity, a tree, and some blue lights. It took maybe five minutes to decorate. This last year, I sent J to an estate sell to look for a side table for Little Viking Girl's bed. He came back with 15 Christmas village houses.


You read that right.

15 miniature porcelain houses

Plus a bunch of other rando stuff. Moral of that story? Never send J to an estate sell unsupervised. This is also why I do the grocery shopping because he'll come home with a bunch of junk food that isn't on the shopping list. #petpeeve


Anyways, it takes a lot longer to set up decorations now. We still have our original nativity, blue lights, and tree but we've since been gifted four other nativities (why do we need five? good question, I don't know #firstworldproblems), a huge chunk of wood from Jerusalem (why you should always be specific when people ask what you would like them to bring back as a souvenir #firstworldproblemscontinued), an electric train that Hulk loves but drives me crazy because it doesn't work consistently and he's always asking for help fixing it, and additional lights and tree ornaments.

I love how our house looks now but I hate the time it took to set everything up and I hate that it sits in storage for 90% of the year (and I hate that train). That's a lot of waste.

Hulk loves how our house looks and this morning after he woke up went around turning on all the lights. After he went to school I went around turning off all of the lights because we ain't made of $$ but once Hulk got home from school he went around turning on all the lights again and then spent 30 minutes playing with the electric train until I strong-armed him into doing his homework.

❤ Oregon

Now that it's snowing it feels festive. I'm excited for the holidays that are coming up and I am glad that we decorated early. It helps prevent winter from feeling so bleak and ominous.











p.s. Not everyone was excited for the Christmas decorations: